2021-02-03

Cool

• 2016 Inverse Kinematics: how to move a robotic arm (and why this is harder than it seems) · Applied Go

• Overcoming Bias : An Adventure

  + [A Simple Model of Grabby
  Aliens](https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.01522)
  

  Furthermore, when uncoordinated local stochastic processes are aggregated to large enough scales, they often result in relatively steady and consistent trends, trends whose average rates are set by more fundamental constraints. Examples include the spread of species and peoples into territories, diseases into populations, and innovations into communities of practice. Without wide coordination, local processes that induce local "death" seem unlikely to induce death correlated across very wide scales

• RNA memory hypothesis | Locklin on science

  the e. coli that lives in your bowels and in overhopped beers have a memory of at least 4 seconds; better than some instagram influencers.

• The Pi You couldn't buy - Blue Pi - James Dawson

Worthy

• Myths of Vaccine Manufacturing | In the Pipeline

• The Non-psychopath's Guide to Managing an Open-source Project - ACM Queue

• Introducing Wokeyleaks - The Spectator - news, politics, life & arts

  never before have so many people been famous. Many friends of mine have 40,000-plus followers; many of them have close to a million. Of Instagram’s one-billion-plus users, only 9.1 percent have fewer than a thousand followers,

• Glad to see something other than fawning admiration of this bitch: The “Florida COVID-19 Whistleblower” Saga Is a Big Lie. | Human Events

  For journalists struggling to explain this deviation from The Narrative, Jones’ tale was irresistible. She confirmed their unspoken suspicions: Florida’s relative success in fighting COVID-19 was an illusion crafted by a mendacious Trumpian governor and his flunkies, who fudged statistics to justify their homicidal reopening drive. DeSantis’ categorical rejection of Jones’ allegations only gave them momentum.

etc

• Eating saturated fats found to reduce severity of pancreatitis

• We must repeal our hate-speech laws

• Is Requiring a College Degree Discrimination? Yes, It Is

• FAA to oversee investigation of SpaceX Mars rocket prototype's explosive landing

• 3 Idaho National Guard members killed in helicopter crash

• Explosion on Movie Set Ignites California Brush Fire, Critically Injures Three

• New York Repeals 'Walking While Trans' Law

  • Walking while Black is still punishable, of course.

• Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

  Despite bullshit-receptivity and profoundness-receptivity being positively correlated with each other, logistic regression analyses showed that profoundness-receptivity had a positive association whereas bullshit-receptivity had a negative association with both types of prosocial behavior. These relations held up for the most part when controlling for potentially intermediating factors such as cognitive ability, time spent completing the survey, sex, age, level of education, and religiosity. The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.

• Google’s new 250Tbit/s subsea cable between the U.S. and Europe is now online

• Elon Musk admits Tesla has quality problems

• How did unelected bureaucrats hijack the role of legislators? | Pacific Legal Foundation

Horseshit

• 'See Something, Say Something Online Act' Punishes Big Tech for Not Snitching

• San Francisco Sues San Francisco Unified School District over Failure to Reopen

• The GameStop Rally Exposed the Perils of ‘Meme Populism’

• Morgan Wallen: US radio stations drop country star over racial slur

• Schiff lobbying Newsom to be appointed California AG: reports

• COVID-19 lockdowns temporarily raised global temperatures | NCAR & UCAR News

• Covid-19 Has Hurt the Effort to Track STDs

• Why is science so polarizing? Blame the way we talk about it

• DOJ drops suit accusing Yale of discriminating against Whites and Asians

• Amazon officially starts using Rivian electric van to make customer deliveries

  • Somone says they're rebadged Mercedes

• Social Media Bias Just Got Even More Orwellian

• McKinsey Settles for $573M over Role in Opioid Crisis

TechSuck

• CDPR urges 'Cyberpunk 2077' players to avoid using mods for now | Engadget

• YouTube Financially Deplatforms Swath Of Indie Media Accounts - Caitlin’s Newsletter

• Parler CEO Fired By 'Rebekah-Mercer-Controlled Board' | ZeroHedge

• Amazon-owned doorbells aren’t answering after large-scale outage

• Berlin’s €2B plan to wean off Huawei (Nokia and Ericsson too) | Hacker News

  • I am going to put it in the most blunt, politically incorrect and frankly offensive way: I don't want my communications to touch any Chinese services, hardware, applications or processes. This is what my gut feelings are. I have surveyed over 200 suppliers in China, I've got zero trust in their professional ethics.

  • Here’s another side of it. When Huawei deployed their equipment previously with at least one big telecom it’s equipment worked so badly that they sent a boatload of engineers onsite to fix it all and as far as I know they did. Now imagine all the systems, schematics, blueprints and locations these engineers touched or at least gained knowledge about. Even without a backdoor in this knowledge would probably be a hacker group’s wet dream if they wanted to plant themselves inside a telco.

• The open-source Magma project will become 5G's Linux

  • Magma – Connecting the Next Billion People

• Matrix adds support for shadow-banning users

• PA Atty Genrl At AG Shapiro’s Urging, Comcast Delays New Data Thresholds – PA Office of Attorney General

  Attorney General Josh Shapiro today announced that under a set of commitments agreed upon by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General (OAG) and Comcast, the telecommunications provider will delay its planned implementation of usage-based data overage charges to existing customers until July 2021 in its Northeast Division.

• Official announcement You can now upload videos to comments and gists on GitHub

• for Fighting for developers: GitHub policy 2020 in review

• Facebook 2050 Exclusive: The Inside Story Of Facebook’s Pivot To Social Responsibility

• China Stockpiles Chips, Chip-Making Machines to Resist U.S.

• The Relentless Jeff Bezos

• Full System Control with New SolarWinds Orion-based and Serv-U FTP Vulnerabilities | Trustwave

• A Second SolarWinds Hack Deepens Third-Party Software Fears

• More SolarWinds News - Schneier on Security

  On attribution: Earlier this month, the US government has stated the attack is “likely Russian in origin.” This echos what then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in December, and the Washington Post‘s reporting (both from December). (The New York Times has repeated this attribution — a good article that also discusses the magnitude of the attack.) More evidence comes from code forensics, which links it to Turla, another Russian threat actor.

  • (links in origninal) because, of course, all of these Totally Trustworthy, non-Agenda Possesing parties have no reason to mis-attribute; and are well known for the accuracy of such sudden and universal pronounceemnts before this.

Economicon

• Robinhood drops down to one star on Play store; Google not stepping in

• Keith Gill, also known as u/DeepFuckingValue.

• Yellen Accepted $700K Speaking Fees from Citadel; Will Not Recuse from Hearing

• 2018, DTCC Is the Industry Ready for T-0 Settlement? (2018)

• Hedge funds emerge mostly unscathed from Reddit trader drama

Unity

• Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin orders stand down to address extremism in the ranks | Daily Mail Online

• Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?

• Depolarizing American voters: Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible to false attitude feedback - PubMed

• The Seditionists Need a Path Back to Society

• The QAnon Delusion Has Not Loosened Its Grip

• A South Carolina mom left QAnon behind

• Analysis: The single most ridiculous dodge by a GOP senator on Marjorie Taylor Greene

• "Double Jeapordy? what's that?" Washington Post: Manhattan DA considering prosecuting Steve Bannon after ...

  The Manhattan District Attorney's Office is considering bringing state charges against Steve Bannon related to the same border wall fundraising campaign fraud scheme for which he was federally charged and then granted a presidential pardon,

BidenTime

• No, Biden Can’t Save Us With a ‘Reality Czar.’ Also, WTF? – Reason.com

• Press Secretary Jen Psaki Scoffs At Space Force After It Saved Americans From Iranian Missile

• The FTC is taking on the gig economy - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech

  Amazon agreed to pay $61.7 million to refund the drivers, a small price tag for a company that just reported its first $100 billion quarter. But beyond the dollar amount, the settlement is a serious signal to the gig companies that the Biden administration will scrutinize their business practices from all angles, and the FTC may be their next opponent in the upcoming regulatory wars.

  • right. and ponies will flutter about on butterfly wings.

Trumpoline

• Georgia secretary of state opens investigation into Lin Wood over illegal voting ...

• Jamie Raskin: Trump's impeachment defense amounts to 'absurd constitutional arguments' - CNNPolitics

• Biden White House: We can't release Trump's visitor logs - POLITICO

Capitol Riots / Fortification

• Shell-shocked and angry: Inside the Capitol Police force a month after the deadly attack - CNNPolitics

• AOC Wasn't Even in the Capitol Building During Her 'Near Death' Experience

• D.C. Police: Likely ‘Not Enough Evidence’ To Charge Capitol Police Officer In Ashli Babbitt’s Death | The Daily Wire

• Canada Designates Proud Boys A Terrorist Group | ZeroHedge

  • Canada designates the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity

• "We will never forget his sacrifice," Pelosi says of fallen Capitol officer

• Nearly 400 Capitol Hill staffers wrote a letter to US senators begging them to convict ...

  The letter described how staffers trapped in the Capitol "fled for our lives" from Trump supporters and urged senators to hold him responsible.

World

• Russian Spies are Behind Environmental Groups. Democrats Shrug | Frontpagemag

• Myanmar Coup: Suu Kyi Is Accused Of Illegally Importing Walkie-Talkies

• Farmers' protest: Rihanna tweet angers Indian government

• German Nuns Sold Orphaned Children to Sexual Predators: Report

COVID

• Fake Covid tests: Criminals try to profit from travel restrictions

• Had Covid? You May Need Only One Dose

• Israel to Widen Covid-19 Vaccines to General Public as Cases Surge

• Denmark to develop digital passport proving vaccinations

• National Park Service to require masks on “narrow or busy trails”

• After WHO COVID-19 Team Visits Wuhan Virology Lab, 'Many Questions'

• The Mystery of India's Plummeting Covid-19 Cases

Climate

• (Jan 23) Two former Trump officials to be investigated for posting papers denying climate change - CNNPolitics

• Could Climate Change Be More Extreme Than We Think?

• US Cities Are Vastly Undercounting Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Researchers Find